Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Campaign View: Mariko Yamada Mail the Good and the Bad

As the campaign winds down, we will be looking periodically at some of the mail campaigns of the various candidates and more interestingly the independent expenditure campaigns.

Yesterday, I received two pieces in my mailbox in support of Mariko Yamada.

The first piece is an attack piece sent by the California Teacher's Association. I do not know who decided that the parking ticket issue was a winning issue, but this is reprehensible for the CTA to stoop to these levels. These kinds of brochures are simply going to anger people and turn them off. The initial reaction to the story was most people at that time felt it was a non-issue and many were critical that the Yamada campaign was trying to make political points based on an issue of this sort. And yet here we are, we have seen several references to this issue and now a piece devoted to it.

It is ashame because the other piece in the mailbox was an outstanding piece--one of the best I have seen, also from the CTA. This is the kind of piece we would expect from the CTA and the kind of piece that would be extremely effective.

This is the inside of the piece, due to the size of the brochure I had to scan it in separately so it not continuous, but it is basically a group shot of ten local respected teachers. Each one has given a testimonial about why Mariko Yamada is their choice. This is a well done piece. It has familiar faces, so it is extremely powerful. This is the type of ad that the CTA should run. The other is beneath them.

For a candidate that pledged to run a clean race, the Yamada campaign and their surrogates have been extremely nasty. As I said the other day, run on your issues, your strengths, and allow the voters to decide. Most people I know are not going to base their decisions on whether or not Christopher Cabaldon had a large amount of parking tickets in Sacramento.

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